By Shawn Dell Joyce

Gas prices have many of us looking at investing in alternative fueled vehicles. Before you buy your next car, take a look at greener vehicles soon available in our country.

—– Gas-electric hybrids were first introduced by Honda in 1999 with the Insight which claimed 70 MPG and the title of most fuel efficient car on the market. Toyota Prius came in second at 50 MPG, but quickly sold more units as the Prius is a midsized car, and still on the market.  Currently there are many hybrids on the market, but few can touch the Prius in fuel economy. Aftermarket improvements on the Prius include an updated battery pack that will give the hybrid up to 100MPG by allowing it to be plugged into an electric outlet. The drawback on this plug in kit is that it voids Toyota warrantees, is expensive, and requires installation by a trained mechanic.

—– Purely electric cars were introduced in 1950’s with the Henney Kilowatt. Low gas prices kept sales slow until General Motors upgraded the design to the EV-01. Although very popular, and pricey, GM pulled the EV-01 off the market and destroyed its entire inventory causing many to speculate on GM’s motives. Nissan seems to have picked up where GM left off with the introduction of the EV-02 Cube in 2012. Nissan’s electric car will have a range of more than 100 miles between overnight charges. This is accomplished by improving battery technology by making batteries flat, and more compact, rather than cylindrical cells. This improvement solves the main problem with electric cars which historically had only a 30 mile range. New electric cars are being designed that may act as storage units for the electrical grid system. They feed back electricity to the grid during times of peak demand, like when their owners are sitting in air-conditioned offices during midday heat.

—– Solar cars would be electric vehicles directly powered by solar panels attached to the car. So far, solar engineers have yet to overcome the pitfalls of collecting enough solar energy to power a car for great distances at highway speeds, and overcoming the weight of the solar panels and battery systems. These shortcomings may be solved by inventive racers in the World Solar Challenge and the North American Solar Challenge, sponsored by the United States Department of Energy. Some automakers have small scale electric cars that can be plugged into solar arrays to recharge. Most of these cars are not street legal yet. It is a short time before plug in electric vehicles can be charged by solar or wind powered generators creating the cleanest and greenest vehicles on the market.

—– Compressed air engines are emissions-free piston engines invented by Frenchman Guy Nègre in the 1990’s. This car uses pressurized air through a conventional fuel injection system to power the vehicle for a range of 100 miles carrying four or five passengers. The only exhaust is cold air which could be recirculated as air conditioning. A tank of air would cost about $3, and take about three minutes at a service station. The downside is finding a service station with the equipment to compress air to the required density. These cars are not scheduled for release in our country, but are expected to be available in the next few years in Europe and Central America.

—– Water-powered cars are just an urban legend at this point with each example turning out to be either a hydrogen-fueled car, or a fraud. A kit can be purchased online for less than $50 that claims to improve fuel efficiency of gasoline-powered engines by injecting water into the mix, but that claim has yet to be proven scientifically. The only water-powered car that has been on the American market was actually a steam-powered car called the Stanley Steamer in 1906.

—– Hydrogen powered cars are mainly electric cars powered by an onboard fuel cell that generates electricity through a hydrogen/oxygen reaction. The benefits are no carbon emissions, since the fuel cell only emits heat and water. Ford has already manufactured a fleet of fuel celled Focus, proving that fuel cell vehicles can be mass produced. However, there is still the problem of hydrogen infrastructure and the lack of refilling stations and lightweight hydrogen storage. Fuel cell cars are also exorbitantly expensive putting them out of the price range of the average consumer at well over $50,000.

—– Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) cars use mainly methane (byproduct of landfills) to fuel normal combustion engines instead of gasoline. Combustion of methane produces the least amount of carbon emissions of all fossil fuels. Most gasoline cars can be retrofitted to become bifuel running on natural gas as well as regular gasoline. There are already an estimated 5 million CNG vehicles running worldwide including cars like Honda Civics and GM released a multifuel vehicle in Brazil that runs on CNG, ethanol, and regular gas. The same motor was used in the Chevy Astra by the taxi industry. Drawbacks include finding refueling stations, and getting major automakers to release these cars to American markets.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School and a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

I recently received a notice from my utility company comparing my energy usage to my neighbors. According to Central Hudson, I used 61 percent less energy than my neighbors and received a double smiley face on my report. You might think that would warm my green heart, but actually, it shows how inefficient most of our homes are.

I’m not really making an effort to be more energy efficient than my neighbors, I’m just more conscious of energy use and do a few things most people don’t…like weatherize windows, open windows instead of using the fan, and line dry clothes whenever possible. By doing a few simple things like these, I save $1,784 according to Central Hudson’s Home Energy Report.

Imagine what you could save if you really made an effort. Walden Mayor Brian Maher did just that, and committed the Village of Walden to take the “Ten Percent Challenge” issued by Sustainable Hudson Valley. This means that the Village government will measure and reduce its energy usage by ten percent, and get ten percent of Walden households to do the same.

Walden, joins Warwick, and Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, as municipalities willing to adopt simple efficiency measures to use tax dollars more wisely.  By successfully measuring, and reducing energy expenses, these municipalities are reducing tax dollars spent on energy by ten percent, and residents who participate are lowering their monthly energy bills by ten percent, saving money all around. To make it even sweeter, Earthkind is donating a solar thermal system to the municipality that reaches ten percent first. Why aren’t all our local governments participating?

In addition to the Village of Walden, the Orange County Chamber of Commerce,  and the Village of Montgomery expressed interest in joining the challenge. Several local businesses will be benchmarks, like the Walden Library and the Wallkill River School, which will have energy audits and reduce their energy use accordingly.

Jon and Kelsey Buhl are Valley Central students, Walden residents, and a brother and sister team that is setting up the challenge in their school. They committed to the challenge because “we are concerned citizens that want to help out our community in any way possible, and this project was a great way for us to get involved.”

These young people are right, and we need more stakeholders like them to help make the Ten Percent Challenge a success. If you want to join them, along with Mayer Maher, and many of the “movers and shakers” of our community, come to the next Ten Percent Challenge meeting in the Bradley Room on the second floor of the Walden Village Hall on Tuesday, May 17 at 7pm. Better yet, call you town and village board members and offer to carpool with them to the meeting.

“We’re in a new economic era. We have growing resource constraints but lots of under-employed people. If we’re going to achieve a turnaround, in economy and quality of life, we have to build upon our assets, and one of the greatest assets is the power of people who want to make a difference,” says J. Michael O’Hara, Campaign Manager, Ten Percent Challenge.

Shawn@zestoforange.com.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

How would you like to get a check back from Central Hudson instead of paying them thousands in utilities this year? If you lived in Green Acres in New Paltz, that could happen to you. Green Acres is a Net Zero Energy housing development nestled amid a conventional housing development at the base of the Shawangunk Ridge.

Zero Energy Homes, or houses that produce as much (or more) energy as they use sounds like the stuff of science fiction. For years many people have thought it impossible, and builders speculated they would be unaffordable, but recently they have become a reality.

“The myth that zero energy homes are impossible in the Northeast, or cost prohibitive, has been broken,” says homebuilder Anthony Aebi. “I’ve found that it wasn’t a problem.” Aebi is the owner of Greenhill Contracting, and builder of Green Acres in New Paltz, NY.

Green Acres consists of twenty-five lots, only seven have finished houses and all but two of those houses have been sold. The average size of Aebi’s houses are four bedrooms, and less than 2,000 square feet. The average price for these homes is around $500,000 but take away the cost of the expensive property and the house itself is only 20 percent more than average market value. Aebi notes that homebuyers last year were given more than $40,000 in tax credits which helped offset the additional costs.

But there’s nothing average about the houses in Green Acres, the homes are all oriented toward the south for maximum passive solar, all have breath-taking views of the ridge from the West facing windows. Each house has curb appeal, and very few have any visible solar panels or signs that they are any different from the neighboring housing development.

What makes Green Acres different is the houses are not conventional “stick frame” houses, like most houses build today. These houses have walls made of foam and metal with concrete poured between them. The panels have a very high insulation value (R22) and give the house the strength to last through earthquakes (up to 9 points on the Richter Scale) and winds of 200 mph. The houses are insulated from top to bottom with sprayed-in foam insulation in the attic and R20 insulation under the floor slab. The houses are so tight that they remain at a constant temperature year round without any heat on.

“There’s no dust,” notes Green Acres architect David Toder of Bolder Architecture. Each home is equipped with a heat recover ventilation unit that makes the indoor air fresher and cleaner than the outdoor air. Geothermal wells provide heating/cooling and hot water to the homes, while eight kilowatt solar panels provide energy. Toder is a LEEDS certified architect and designed the homes to meet LEEDS Gold standards.

But the real proof on Zero Energy houses lies with the people who live in them. David Shepler was one of the first people to buy into Green Acres. Shepler is not your average homebuyer, and was looking for a greener house than the “typical McMansions on the market today.” Shepler notes that financing was the biggest hurdle between him and Green Acres.

“Appraisers don’t value green features,” said Shepler. This made it hard to get an accurate assessment of the cost savings of having no monthly utility bills. He has lived in his zero energy house for more than two years, and notes that he received a check from the local utility company for $80 after his first year, and $172 after his second year. Utility companies measure net zero on a yearly scale, starting in January. For a home to be zero energy, it has to produce as much energy as it draws from the grid, resulting in no monthly utility bills. Shepler’s home is slightly better than zero energy.

Shepler estimates that his monthly out-of-pocket costs for the luxurious home he and his sons live in roughly equivalent to a $450,000 home. Greenhill Contracting’s website cites that the cost of purchasing a $600,000 zero energy home at a 5 percent mortgage will cost you roughly the same per year as a $452,000 home. The difference is in a lower cost of living, and government incentives which could go towards your down payment.

Aebi didn’t set out to build a greener house, and is quick to point out that his houses are built to last with “green” being a side benefit. “I’m not an environmentalist,” he claims, “I just wanted to build a practical home that would last.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates with our current rate of obesity, a third of our children born in 2000 will develop diabetes. The statistic is up to a half for African American and Hispanic children. Asthma, allergies, anxiety disorders and learning disabilities can all be traced to diet. Something has gone terribly wrong with our children’s nutrition.

For the first time in fifteen years, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it will upgrade nutritional standards for the National School Lunch and Breakfast program. Under a new law signed by President Obama in mid-January, children will be offered something that comes closer to current nutritional standards. The act came after much effort by health-conscious parents and groups to limit the high fat, high sugar school lunches that currently contribute to childhood obesity, and juvenile diabetes.

Soon, our children can expect to find an increase in fruits and vegetables on their lunch trays. This means nearly four half-cup servings a week of real vegetables, not just French fries or ketchup which used to qualify under the old standards. New vegetables will include dark green veggies and legumes, and more whole grains. At least half the grains served must be whole grains, and milk will now be fat-free or low fat instead of whole. Sodium levels will also be reduced.

While these changed are laudable, many local foods advocates want to see the reforms go farther to include sourcing the fresh fruits and vegetables locally whenever possible. In a recent New York Times editorial Alice Waters, a famous chef and local foods advocate, and Katrina Heron point out our schools “pay good money for what are essentially leftovers from big American food producers.”  The duo admits it would cost “about $5 per child to feed 30 million schoolchildren” an organic, locally-grown meal, “but the long term benefits would be worth it.”

Benefits like improving children’s dietary habits, food safety would be easier to track, and attention spans would likely improve as well. Probably the greatest benefit would be the money diverted from big food processors would go instead to local farmers thus improving the economy of the school’s community.

Pablo Rosado is a chef manager for Flik Independent School which provides food service for private schools including Tuxedo Park. If your child is lucky enough to have Rosado’s lunch program; they would choose between a salad bar with a whole grain salad, leafy lettuce salad and 15 other vegetable choices, deli buffet featuring whole grain bread choices or flavored pitas, or a hot lunch with a vegan soup choice. Rosado follows guidelines from on-staff dieticians including  no trans fats,  no synthetic  hormones, also uses local produce  with a focus on organic  when he can find it. Rosado’s lunches cost around $2.50 per student, while most public school lunches cost around $1.50

Wouldn’t you pay the extra $1 for your child to eat a more nutritious lunch with local ingredients? We need to overhaul our food system, now, as part of our economic recovery. Shifting from a global food system to a local food system would solve many problems at once. Not only would more people have access to fresh, varied local produce, but communities would benefit from the economic stimulus generated by keeping food money in the local economy.

The USDA has created a portal that is open to public comments on this new law only for a few more days. Comments may be submitted Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an award-winning newspaper columnist. Shawn@zestoforange.com

In the early 1990’s when frankenfoods were being evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, several FDA scientists warned that GE crops could cause negative health effects. These scientists were ignored and blanket approvals of GE crops were passed. Perhaps one reason for the quick approval process is the revolving door at the FDA, which allows corporate executives from biotech giants to hold decision-making positions in the FDA. Michael Taylor was an attorney for Monsanto before being appointed deputy commissioner of the FDA in 1991. Taylor hastened approval of GE crops through the FDA then returned to Monsanto to become the vice president for public policy.

It is very difficult to avoid eating genetically-modified organisms (GMO’s) in our country, because they are so pervasive in the food system and unlabeled in the grocery stores. Part of the reason for this is biotech giants fought to keep GMO foods unlabeled. Most recently, the growth hormones from GE organisms known as rBGH, which is given to cows to make them produce more milk, were banned in Europe and Canada after the authorities found out about the health risks resulting from drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH hormones. Some American milk producers started labeling their milk “rBGH and rBST free.” Monsanto, which sells bovine growth hormones under the brand name Posilac, began suing dairy producers to force them to stop labeling their milk.

In addition to most milk products, GMO’s can be found in most commercially-farmed meats, and processed foods on store shelves. In our country, 89 percent of all soy, 61 percent of all corn, and 75 percent of all canola are genetically-altered. Other foods like commercially-grown papaya, zucchini, tomatoes, several fish species, and food additives like enzymes, flavorings, and processing agents, including the sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet®) and rennet used to make hard cheeses, also contain GMO’s.

To complicate matters, GMO’s move around in the ecosystem through pollen, wind, and natural cross-fertilization. The Union of Concerned Scientists conducted two separate independent laboratory tests on non-GM seeds “representing a substantial proportion of the traditional seed supply” for corn, soy and oilseed rape. The test found that half the corn and soy, and 83 percent of the oilseed rape were contaminated with GM genes, eight years after the GM varieties were first grown on a large scale in the US.

The reports states that “Heedlessly allowing the contamination of traditional plant varieties with genetically engineered sequences amounts to a huge wager on our ability to understand a complicated technology that manipulates life at the most elemental level.” There could be “serious risks to health” if drugs and industrial chemicals from the next generation of GM crops were consumed in food.

What can you do to avoid GMO’s?

· Know how your food is grown by buying directly from local farmers.

· Support organic agriculture, and food producers who label their ingredients, particularly dairy farmers.

· Eat pastured meat raised on organic feed-the only way to ensure this is to buy from someone you know.

· Support farmers who are a sued by biotech giants. Monsanto has set aside an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting more than 150 farmers for a total of more than $15 million dollars.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Bicycling is the lowest-carbon-producing form of transportation (along with walking) that gives you exercise and a great view at the same time. Many larger cities are actively encouraging cycling as it helps alleviate traffic congestion, and increase foot traffic in downtowns. Benefits of promoting cycling in cities include improving over health and well-being of residents, as well as the local economy.

This Thursday, the Orange County Transportation Council is hosting an “Open House” to discuss a bicycling “Master Plan” for our community. The open house is from 4:30-8:30 with presentations at 4:30, 5:30 and 7pm, at the Village of Montgomery Senior Center on Bridge Street. The Orange County Planning Department is updating the master plan is open to your input on ways to encourage non-motorized vehicle use. This is part of an effort to make our region more bicycle friendly.

What makes a community “bicycle friendly” according the League of American Bicyclists who rate bicycle friendly communities, aer what they call the “Five E’s.” These are Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning. A community must demonstrate achievements in each of the five categories in order to be considered for an award. Communities with more significant achievements in these areas receive superior awards.

—– For Engineering, a community needs to design a “bicycle master plan” to a accommodate cyclists on public roads, using well-designed bike lanes and multi-use paths. The community has bike racks for secure bike parking .

—– Education includes teaching cyclists of all ages how to ride safely in any area for multi-use paths to congested city streets as well as teaching motorists how to share the road safely with cyclists.

—– Encouragement means a community promotes and encourages bicycling through events like “Bike Month” and “Bike to Work Week” events as well as producing community bike maps, route finding signage, community bike rides, commuter incentive programs, and having a “Safe Routes to School” program.

—– Enforcing laws that encourage safer cycling and road-sharing helps create a safer bicycling environment in the community.

—– Evaluation and planning is simply determining ways to make cycling safer, and setting benchmarks to gauge success. Here the community is judged on the systems that they have in place to evaluate current programs and plan for the future.

Many communities around the country have encouraged bicycling by creating bike lanes on existing roads, bicycle racks in village downtowns, and incorporated bicycle safety programs into driver’s ed classes and schools. Some have gone a little farther, and set up “safe routes” for children to ride bicycles to school, thus eliminating the need for school buses and lowering school taxes. Others have encouraged cycling with “Bike to Work” week, and printing maps showing safe bicycling routes on and off roads.

As more and more local residents are parking their cars and putting on their bike helmets, it’s time for munipalities to create safer shared roads and encourage bicycling.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

“Think local for a stronger economy!”

Recently, we had a day where local merchants encouraged people to spend $25 at a local business. While that may seem like a small gesture, if we all do it, and make a habit of it, we could end the recession in the Wallkill Valley.

Economist Michael Shuman suggests that if every family spent just ten percent of its income at local businesses, it could add up to an infusion of millions of dollars into the local economy.  Where this happens, communities tend to have a higher quality of life, lower crime rates, and a friendlier, more neighborly attitude.

Local businesses are not shipping goods over thousands of miles and paying the higher fuel costs, also they tend to bank local, advertise in local papers, purchase local, use local contractors, and pay good wages and benefits to local people. That keeps money bouncing around longer in the local community. Each time that money passes through another pair of local hands, it improves the local economy a little more.

“About 42 percent of our economy is “place based” or created through small, locally-owned businesses,” notes Economist and author Michael Shuman. He estimates that we could expand this figure to 70 percent or more, by localizing some of our main expenditures. In the process, we would boost our local economy, and save money at the same time.

—–Local Food-Most of our urban areas are surrounded by farms that produce lots of local foods, that are shipped thousands of miles away. Ironically, 75 percent of fresh apples eaten in New York City come from Washington State, and foreign countries. Meanwhile, our farms grow 10 times more apples than the Big Apple consumes. If we all started eating closer to home; say within a 100 mile radius, eating in season, and lower on the food chain, we could localize our food system.

—–Local Electricity-The electricity for our houses and businesses most often flows through hundreds of miles of power lines from the source to our home. Imagine if cul-de-sac residents teamed up and purchased a communal wind turbine, or set up solar panels on all the southern-facing garage roofs. We could create a series of small-scale energy providers that could potentially meet their own power needs.

In Montgomery, a Taylor Biomass has found a way to generate electricity from bagged household garbage.  This would fill a huge leak in our local economy replacing fossil fuels with locally-generated electricity.

—–Suburban Renewal-If we relocalized our towns so that residents could walk to the farmer’s market, hardware store, library, and post office all in the same area, we wouldn’t have to drive so much. Driving is expensive, and environmentally devastating. When you walk or bicycle, you go slower, appreciate the architecture and history, wave to the neighbors, and possibly engage in conversation. This kind of walkable downtown encourages local spending and reinforces community bonds.

—–Business to Business-Part of what my business; The Wallkill River School does, is encourage our clientele to frequent other businesses. An example: We partner with Wildfire Grill to provide appetizers at our monthly receptions in exchange for advertising on our class brochures, and encouraging our reception guests to go for dinner at this fine local restaurant. This keeps the 50-75 people who come to our receptions in Montgomery spending money at more local places. When the tide comes in, all boats float!

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery.

by Shawn Dell Joyce

The chill of fall is upon us and creeping into our homes. But before you turn up the thermostat, consider winterizing your home to use the heat more efficiently.

“Efficiency is our largest untapped natural resource,” according to efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. It’s much cheaper to buy efficiency than energy.

Most homes have tiny cracks and gaps around windows and outlets that leak cold air. If you were to put all these little holes and cracks together, you would have about a 3-foot gaping hole in your wall. It would be like leaving a window open year-round. Use a caulk gun and a roll of duct tape to patch any holes you find in the walls, windows, baseboards and ductwork.

“A typical homeowner may invest $1,000 on his home’s building envelope, but he can save up to $300 on energy bills each year,” states one of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s home energy briefs.

If you haven’t already, change all your incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, which use two-thirds less energy and last 10 times longer. Brighten a room with lighter-colored carpet, wall coverings and window treatments. Using daylight is the most energy-efficient way to light a room, so capitalize on it. Light-emitting diode, or LED, lighting is more cost-effective than even CFLs, as the bulbs last longer. Put certain lights on timers and sensors so that they shut themselves off when they no longer are needed.

“Lighting a whole room so you can see what you’re doing is similar to refrigerating a whole house to preserve perishable food,” Lovins notes.

Insulation should be installed by professionals to achieve the maximum benefits, but it can be done by a knowledgeable homeowner. The cost of insulating will be returned to you as savings on your home energy bills. It is especially important to insulate attic floors and basement ceilings. If you have crawl spaces, basement doors and attic stairs, you can insulate these yourself using rigid foam panels.

“The insulation doesn’t typically stop all of the air infiltration,” George Del Valle, an insulation contractor, recently said on DIY Network.
“So you want to do everything you can to stop that air from coming in.”

If you were to take an infrared photo of your home, you would see heat leaking out your windows and around your doors. Tight weatherstripping around doors eliminates much of that heat loss. Try this test: Put a piece of paper on the threshold of your door, and close it. If you can pull this paper out from under your door without tearing it, you are losing money and energy. Weatherstrip that door.

Also, replacing single-pane windows with efficient double-pane windows is ideal, but if that isn’t in your budget right now, consider sealing the windows with sheet plastic. You can tape the plastic to the molding around the window, creating a dead-air space that insulates against heat transfer. Doing this one thing will make your home feel much warmer and save you considerably more money than the cost of the plastic.

If you have forced-air heating and cooling systems, then you have ducts throughout your house. “In a typical house … about 20 percent of the air that moves through the duct system is lost due to leaks and poorly sealed connections,” according to Energy Star.

Leaky ductwork means that the house feels uncomfortable regardless of the thermostat setting and that your utility bills are always high. Exposed ducts in attics, basements, crawl spaces and garages can be repaired easily by sealing the leaks with duct sealant (duct mastic) or sometimes with just duct tape. Also, insulating ducts that run through un-insulated spaces (such as attics, garages and crawl spaces) can save you big bucks.

Energy Star estimates that knowledgeable homeowners or skilled contractors can save up to 20 percent on heating and cooling costs — or up to 10 percent on their total annual energy bills — just by sealing and insulating. If your total energy bills are $250 per month, that would equal $25 per month in savings, or $300 per year. While this advice can’t replace a home energy audit, it can help you save money and energy in the coming winter.

  Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

As our children go back to school, many parents grow increasingly more concerned about the school lunch program. Most school lunches cost between $2.50 and $3, with government subsidies through the United States Department of Agriculture, public schools receive $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. This adds up to about $9 billion total to feed 30 billion children each year. Ironically, most of this money pays the janitor, cafeteria expenses and other nonfood costs as well as lunch.

So what do our kids get for $2.57?

“(Meals) distributed by the National School Lunch Program contains some of the same ingredients found in fast food, and the resulting meals routinely fail to meet basic nutritional standards.” Pointed out Alice Waters, chef and local foods activist, and Katrina Heron, director of Chez Panisse Foundation. “Yet this is how the government continues to “help” feed millions of American schoolchildren, a great many of them from low-income households.”

Waters and Heron started the Edible Schoolyard, a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, on a one-acre organic garden for urban public school students at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. This program connects kids with their food by teaching them all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing nutritious, seasonal produce. This school still uses the high fat U.S.D.A. commodities, but it also cooks food from scratch, and has added organic fruits and vegetables to the menu as well.

Most schools don’t actually have a real kitchen anymore, or a staff who can actually cook. Foods distributed through the school lunch program are already processed and cooked chicken nuggets, pizza that just needs to be thawed or heated. Schools also receive bonus commodities from big food producers of processed cheese and other high-fat, low-nutrition junk foods.

Parent organizations have sprung up across the country to demand more nutritious foods in public schools like Two Angry Moms, and Better School Foods. Other schools across the country are integrating gardens into their curriculum, or partnering with local farms to grow produce specifically for the schools.

So what would it cost to revamp the school lunch program to include fresh organic produce from local farms?

“It could be done for about $5 per child, or roughly $27 billion a year, plus a one-time investment in real kitchens,” notes Waters and Heron in a recent New York Times editorial. While that may sound expensive, it pales in comparison to long term health benefits, lowered juvenile diabetes and obesity rates, and better dietary habits for life. As parents, our choices are pay for the cost though better quality school lunches or higher medical bills later.

A side benefit of linking local farms with school lunches is that it will boost local economies rather than leak money out of the school’s community. Most small farms rely on sound farming practices that don’t significantly damage local ecosystems, unlike large scale food growers.

“Every public school child in America deserves a healthful and delicious lunch that is prepared with fresh ingredients.” Writes Waters and Heron. “Cash-strapped parents should be able to rely on the government to contribute to their children’s physical well-being, not to the continued spread of youth obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other diet-related problems. Let’s prove that there is such a thing as a good, free lunch.”
Want to change the National School Lunch Program? A few suggestions from www.BetterSchoolFoods.org:

—Have Lunch with Your Child in the School Cafeteria -Experience with your eyes, nose, ears and mouth what your kids are eating. Ask to see ingredient lists for all the food on the menu.

—Grow Your Numbers -Invite other parents in the community to join you in the cafeteria who might not have been aware of what the kids are eating.
 
—Join a Committee or Coalition-Get involved with the nutrition committee in your school or a wellness committee in your district. Create one if none exist. 
Build Your Food IQ -Learn which foods are right for your family – not all foods are good for everyone!  
—Cook with Your Kids-Read books, takes classes, watch cooking shows. Be adventurous and try new foods, test recipes. Make it a family project.

—Grow Some Food in a Garden -Get your kids connected to their food. Create and participate in school gardening and cooking classes that produce real food. Connect the dots between our environmental crisis and our food crisis.
 
—Call Congress-Let them know you support legislation to get advertising and junk food out of schools, and a Farm Bill that supports small farmers and local markets. Let’s flood our schools with fresh fruits and vegetables.
 
—Walk Your Talk as a Family-Eat dinner together whenever possible.
Don’t Give Up! Our children’s health and well-being needs to be our top priority. Take a stand and get involved. Don’t assume someone else will.
Shawn@zestoforange.com